INFPs live, to an unusual degree, in the world of what could be rather than what is. They have a rich inner life - strong values, vivid imagination, a sensitivity to beauty and injustice in roughly equal measure - and a tendency to feel that the external world keeps failing to live up to it. This is not naivety; INFPs often see the gap between what is and what should be with great clarity. The challenge is that the gap can feel so large that action feels futile, which produces cycles of idealism and disillusionment that are recognisable to most people who identify with this type.

High Openness and Agreeableness with lower Conscientiousness maps to a personality that is creatively capable, emotionally generous, and often struggling with the practical architecture of getting things done. INFPs tend to do their best work when the task has personal meaning attached - they can sustain extraordinary effort on things they care about and almost none on things they don't. The research also shows that this trait combination correlates with above-average creative output and below-average professional satisfaction, which suggests that finding the right domain matters more for INFPs than for most other types.